A distribution deal now freshly inked with Roadside Attractions, Alejandro González Iñárritu's "Biuitful" is ready to enter the Oscar fray with a brand new trailer, putting an emphasis on Cannes Best Actor winner Javier Bardem.

A distribution deal now freshly inked with Roadside Attractions, Alejandro González Iñárritu's "Biuitful" is ready to enter the Oscar fray with a brand new trailer, putting an emphasis on Cannes Best Actor winner Javier Bardem.

The film will open in limited release on December 29th and expand from there. Official synopsis and trailer below (or watch it in HD at Apple):

The film follows Uxbal (Bardem) -- who can communicate with the dead, has an uneasy relationship with his bi-polar ex-wife and is juggling a handful of slowly spiraling black market deals -- in his last days as he tries to set things right before he passes away from terminal cancer. Yeah, this is grim, depressing stuff despite the misleading sort of thriller motif the first half of the trailer suggests. While we didn't particularly care for the film at Cannes, other members of the Playlist have seen it and liked it a bit more and everyone can agree that Bardem is solid in the lead, turning in a great performance.

Biutiful is a love story between a father and his children. This is the journey of Uxbal, a conflicted man who struggles to reconcile fatherhood, love, spirituality, crime, guilt and mortality amidst the dangerous underworld of modern Barcelona. His livelihood is earned out of bounds, his sacrifices for his children know no bounds. Like life itself, this is a circular tale that ends where it begins. As fate encircles him and thresholds are crossed, a dim, redemptive road brightens, illuminating the inheritances bestowed from father to child, and the paternal guiding hand that navigates life's corridors, whether bright, bad - or biutiful.